Moving Forward

The Chicago Fire are a collective bunch. Following last week's 4-1 loss to Toronto FC, the Fire players to their head coach were sharing the blame.

Defender C.J. Brown said the loss was squarely on the defense: "It was 100 percent our fault."

Midfielder and Chicago's lone goal scorer Logan Pause said "it's the whole collect -- us in the midfield, knowing when to go, when to stay."

And Fire head coach Carlos de los Cobos said, "It was my responsibility. I tried to push the team in the second half, tried to find the score, find the goal that would tie it."

The Fire came up short across the entire pitch, and Toronto capitalized. Simply put, Chicago hopes this match represents a lesson learned.

"We took one on the chin this past week. There's really no other way to look at it," Pause said. "It's unfortunate. We got exposed, tried to push the game a little bit in the second half, gave up that early goal right at the start of the second half -- that hurt us."

Chicago (2-3-2) prepares for a road trip to face the Kansas City Wizards (2-3-1) on Saturday. Reiterating the shortcomings from last week provides a vivid picture of just how much Chicago strayed from its game plan and what the Fire did well in some of their previous matches.